Projects in the Computing Curriculum

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Mike Holcombe, Andy Stratton, Sally Fincher and Gary Griffiths (Eds.)

Projects in the Computing Curriculum Proceedings of the Projed 98 Workshop, Sheffield 1998

, Springer

Mike Holcombe Department of Computer Science, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, SI 4DP

Andy Stratton Department of Computer Science University of Sheffield, Sheffield, SI 4DP

Sally Fincher Kent University, Canterbury, CT2 7NF

Gary Griffiths School of Computing and Mathematics, Teeside University, Middlesborough, TSI 3BA

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Projects in the computing curriculum: proceedings of the

Project 98 workshop, Sheffield 1998 l.Computer science - Study and teaching (Higher) - Great Britain - Congresses 2.Computers - Study and teaching (Higher) - Great Britain - Congresses l.Holcombe, W. M. L. (W. MichaelL.) 004'.0711'41 ISBN-13:978-1-85233-010-1 e-ISBN-13:978-1-4471-1261-7 DOl: 10.10071978-1-4471-1261-7

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

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FOREWORD

Dr Peter Milton, Director of Programme Review, Quality Assurance Agency

I am grateful to the authors for giving me the opportunity to write this foreword, mainly because it represents the first occasion that the Fund for the Development of Teaching and Learning (FDTL) has led directly to a pUblication such as this. In my former capacity as Director of Quality Assessment at the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), I chaired the FDTL Committee during 1996/7 and am delighted to see the projects which were selected so painstakingly leading to successful outcomes.

Assessment of the quality of higher education (HE) was introduced in 1993 and was intended to improve public information about what was on offer in British universities and colleges, as well as to assist in the enhancement of educational opportunities for students. This was part of a larger agenda in which educational quality and the standards achieved by students have come under increasing scrutiny, with a long-term objective of linking funding allocations to the quality of the provision.

It was in this context that the FDTL Initiative was launched in 1995 to support projects aimed at stimulating developments in teaching and learning and to encourage the dissemination of good practice across the HE sector. Good practice is identified through the process of quality assessment and bids for funding can only be made by those institutions which have demonstrated high quality provision. To date, the programme includes 63 projects drawn from 23 subject areas.

The 44 projects funded in the first phase, of which this project in Computer Science is one, started in October 1996 and cover the 15 subjects assessed between Summer 1993 and Spring 1995. Phase two, comprising 19 projects drawn from a further eight subjects, commenced in October 1997. The Initiative is funded by the HEFCE and by the Department of Education Northern Ireland (DENI), with just under £14m allocated for the four-year period 1996-2000, and is co-ordinated by HEFCE staff in conjunction with the Centre for Higher Education Practice at the Open University. All institutions which have been awarded grants are themselves making contributions towards the projects by releasing staff and resources and through overhead costs.

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Phase one projects are entering their second year of activity, with dissemination of outcomes taking many forms. These include training events, the production of teaching and learning materials, the construction and maintenance of web­sites and e-mail discussion groups, newsletters, conferences and workshops. Future dissemination will be even more innovative, particularly in terms of exploiting the natural links between different projects in the same subject areas. It is with pleasure, therefore, that I commend the material contained herein to you.

PREFACE

Computer Science is a practical subject We teach the underlying theory of course, but it is by putting the theory into practice that one really learns how to design and build quality systems. Thus much of a student's effort is focused on practical work. In many cases this practical work is fairly constrained, often a specific task or problem is set and the solutions to these are of a fairly predictable nature. The real challenge appears when the problem is of an open ended nature and the student or students have to explore many different issues on the way to constructing a solution. The role of projects in the computing curriculum is therefore of great importance. The Project'98 workshop, from which this volume has evolved, was held to look at current experiences and ideas about the many and varied types of University projects.

What is a projectl It could be a large piece of work carried out by an individual student over perhaps two semesters, perhaps in the last or penultimate year of study and often research-oriented. Equally, it could be a first year group project where a small group of students are beginning to experience the problems and issues related to teamwork in the context of a simple software development problem. In the papers in this volume we will meet a broad cross-section of project styles. In each case the project consists of an extended piece of work involving several weeks effort In many cases each student or team is investigating a different problem or issue and in other cases there is a single problem and the teams compete to find a solution.

In all these cases, particularly where the project is somewhat open ended, there are concerns about assessing the work fairly and reliably. There is much to be learnt here, as well as in the processes whereby the teacher manages the project process and the extent to which students share this responsibility.

The academic community is also being told by industrial colleagues that their educational provision is not entirely relevant to industry's needs. Projects can provide a mechanism for overcoming some of these worries and help students to develop many of the skills and understanding needed to apply computing technology in an effective way in the world of work. In an age where quality assurance issues in education are a major concern the development of innovative project based learning can seem to be a high risk undertaking. The setting of realistic and defensible objectives has to be undertaken and this can seem daunting. Yet many examples of staff developing exciting and effective practices can be found, some of them in this volume.

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We must not., however, forget the student dimension. Without their enthusiasm none of this is possible. One unique feature of this book is that it has contributions from students. In one case the student examined the way group allocation might affect project outcomes, the other contribution (from a group of students) describes the work of the prototype company that they set up. We would have liked to have received more student contributions and perhaps, if there is another volume like this, this will come to pass.

We hope that this volume will provide some ideas and experiences that can be used by others in developing their use of projects in the computing curriculum in the attempt to achieve many of our educational objectives.

Some of the issues addressed include:

,.. managing project work; ,.. assessing project work; ,.. industrial projects; ,.. large group projects; ,.. individual projects.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book originated with the Project'98 Workshop held at the University of Sheffield in April 1998. It was organised by three of the educational development projects funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England under its Fund for the Development of Teaching and Learning. These three projects all share a focus on the teaching and learning of computer science and software engineering through project work.

We would like to thank all those involved in the organisation of the workshop and the Programme Committee for all the work they did in making the Workshop such a success. In particular we must thank Marie Willett for making sure that everything ran so smoothly.

PROGRAMME COMMITIEE

Mike Holcombe (Sheffield University)

Andy Stratton (Sheffield University)

Sally Fincher (Kent University)

Gary Griffiths (Teesside University)

Dan Simpson (Brighton University)

Andrew McGettrick (Strathclyde University)

Alan Jones (Teesside University)

Gordon Davies (Open University)

John Slater (Kent University)

Neil Willis (Leeds Metropolitan University)

Bernard Suffrin (Oxford University)

Steve Madddock (Sheffield University)

Tony Cowling (Sheffield University)

CONTENTS

Introduction ............................................................................................................. xiii

PART 1 Professional Issues and Projects

Teaching Professional Ethics to Software Engineers G I Brown (University o/Sheffield) ............................................................................ 3

Using Other People's Experience of Project Work: Realising Fitness for Purpose M Petre (Open University) and S Fincher (University o/Kent) ............................. 19

Using Group Project Work to Enhance the Learning of Professional Issues L R Neal (Brunei University) .......... ~ ......................................................................... 31

PART 2 Group Projects

Improving the Quality of Software Engineering Courses Through University Based Industrial Projects A Stratton, M Holcombe and P Croll (University o/Sheffield) .............................. 47

Using Virtual Workspaces to Promote HND Group Project Success V King (Coventry University) ................................................................................... 70

Group Projects for the Software Engineering of Knowledge Based Systems M P Lee, A Harrison andAISammes (Cranfield University) ............................... 79

The Prof@'f Project G Griffiths and M Lockyer (University o/Teesside) ............................................... 89

PART 3 New Directions

VICI: Experiences in Introducing Student run Software Companies into the Curriculum M Holcombe and A Stratton (University o/Sheffield) ......................................... 103

Non-technical Issues in Undergraduate CS Project Work or What Are We (All) Here For? R D Boyle and MAC Clark (University o/Leeds) ................................................ 117

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PART 4 Negotiation

HEFCE EPCOS Project: Towards a Framework for Transferable Negotiated Learning Practices in Team Projects M Birtle (University o/Teesside) ............................................................................ 129

The Role of Learning Conversations (and the Learning Coach) in Computing Projects in Higher Education'in the UK B Morris (Brunei University) .................................................................................. 143

PART 5 Managing Projects

Computing Science Projects at the University of Glasgow R Cooper and R WeU and (University o/Glasgow) .............................................. 169

The Sheffield University Maxi Project - The Industrial Project Manager's Perspective S Price (Price Project Services Ltd) ......................................................................... 184

Perceptions of Final Year Project Outcomes P Capon (The University o/Manchester) .............................................................. 196

POSTER

Group Projects L F Wright (Liverpool/ohn Moores University) ................................................... 209

STUDENT POSTERS

A Window on Group Formation Factors K Thorn (University o/Kent) .................................................................................. 217

The VICI Student IT Company G Bardsley, S Cadd, D East, A Howitt, D Khan, P Todd (University o/Sheffield) .......................................................................................... 225

Author Index ........................................................................................................... 231

INTRODUCTION

The first part of the book is concerned with the teaching of a variety of professional issues. It is becoming increasingly important, as the computing industry develops into a professional, accredited and regulated activity that universities address these issues. In his paper on teaching ethics, G Brown tackles the difficult and challenging task of trying to persuade a generally sceptical audience that ethics are important and can impact upon many practical professional aspects of life as a software engineer. By asking students to keep a personal diary and to record their thoughts on ethical issues that arise in their daily lives he hopes to achieve a more direct and personal involvement with students in a way that case studies may not.

The paper by M Petre and S Fincher looks at a collaborative project involving a number of universities in the management and organisation of project work in the curriculum. The Effective Projectwork in Computer Science (EPCOS) programme seeks to identify good practice in this area and to attempt to evaluate and help to transfer this experience to other departments. Aspects such as outcomes, allocation, management models, assessment, negotiation, integration with the curriculum and large teams are examined.

The focus of L Neal's paper is the learning of professional issues through organised group projects. Here the groups of students look at a scenario describing a plausible problem which has a number of ethical and legal dimensions. The students investigate and discuss the issues and write a group report and give a presentation.

In part two we examine more general group projects. The first paper describes a group project for second year students which involves solving problems for industrial clients. The paper, by A Stratton, M Holcombe and P Croll also explores the problem of running such projects in an era of increasing class sizes.

The use of an Internet web site to provides a strong motivation for students to focus their group projects on. V King explores some of the issues of enthusing students through the use of such a virtual workspace. A number of promising experiences are reported.

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Knowledge based systems is the technology considered by M Lee, A Harrison and A Sammes. Here group projects are used in the development of significant expert systems with a wide variety of knowledge domains. Experiences and observations on the running of these projects are described.

The Professional Skills at Teesside project is described in the paper be G Griffiths and M Lockyer. The purpose of the project is to provide supporting materials in the areas of group projects, live projects, professional skills, supervised work experience and student support and monitoring. The paper describes the activities of the project and offers some conclusions.

Part three looks at some new directions and reflections on project work.

The idea of senior students setting up their own software company and trading with real clients is considered by M Holcombe and A Stratton. This course, although only recently introduced, has been a successful experiment and the paper describes the background and some of the responses from the students on it.

R Boyle's paper poses a number of important questions about the purpose of project work. The non-technical outcomes, skills and experiences are often as important as the technical knowledge gained. The paper concludes with some proposals to ensure that these non-technical aspects are considered in the planning of project work.

The next part focuses on negotiation.

Most projects involve some degree of negotiation even if it is of an informal type during the course of a meeting between students and supervisers. M Birtle's paper looks at the process of addressing negotiation in an explicit fashion. A framework for negotiated learning in team projects is proposed together with some suggestions for implementing this within a university course.

B Morris looks at some of the problems associated with organising individual projects for large classes. The idea of a learning coach who coordinates and motivates the students as they develop their project from idea to fruition is explained.

In part five the issues of managing and organising projects is considered. R Cooper and R WeIland describe the approach of their university in using

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technology to assist .in a variety of aspects of the process. The use of suitable web pages is shown to be of value in this respect.

The views of an industrial consultant who is responsible for managing group projects provides an interesting alternative to the usual academic perspective. S Price has been managing student groups directly for a number of years and his application of industrial attitudes to the process have a number of educational benefits.

Finally we hear about the perceptions of the students actually doing the projects. P Capon describes the results of a survey carried out amongst project stuents and looks at the differences between some of the perceptions of the students and those of their teachers, particularly relating to the assessment of the project.

The book ends with some posters describing a number of aspects of project work.

L Wright looks at the experiences of teaching a large class and concludes that the planning of a "cyber cafe" makes an interesting and useful activity for orienting a group project around.

Two posters submitted by students complete this part. K Thorn examined some of the psychological issues in the process of group formation as part of a project in cognitive psychology. Some interesting information is obtained from surveys and analysed. The VICI company is a software house set up by a group of fourth year students which is trading on a number of fronts, software development, consultancy and training. Some further details of the company's activities are described.